The Magic of Simple Green

And here is the Harlequin troupe after their bath.

All shiny clean and ready for new uniforms...

Lunar Soldiers

Back in the old days, the Lunar Empire of Glorantha had certain, er, similarities with the Roman Empire. That's all changed now that Greg has uttered profound pronouncements about Mesopotamia and Media and stuff. Yeah, right.

Anyway, Warlord Games have some nice, reasonably priced figures that work well for our 1st Edition Runequest games.

Here we have test pieces for heartland corps heavy infantry, pre-rune level in bronze and rune level in iron. No similarity to Romans, no sir, not at all...

And now, back to Eldar.

And Off We Go In A New Direction

The "what shall I paint today?" dilemma was once again rearing its head when, riding to my rescue came our local LGS. Someone is about to run a 40K escalation league. Now, I've never played 40K and have often poked fun at it but, curse them, GW make some cool models for the system and quite a lot a few may have "accidentally" found their way into my stash, so this seems like a good time to pull them out and get them painted.

About ten years ago, I collected a small force of Eldar Harlequins, cos they were cool and dynamic and had a really funky PDF army list. Back then, they were dressed in yellow, orange and green clothes, all of which have a shimmery, irridescent coating on them which the camera cannot pick up, but which is visible in the flesh. We are no longer in the 'noughts and fashions have changed; the Eldar may be staid and aloof but even they pick up on such things eventually. So, say goodbye to:

as they prepare for a plunge into the Simple Green bath.

Sadly, the Solo is no longer allowed to fight, which is a shame because he was pretty scary from the little I remember. He will have to watch from the wings as the Shadowseer steps into the performance.

And so, off they go...

Reaper Warriors Meet Paint

Whilst carefully avoiding painting models that might accidentally lead to the completion of any given army or collection, I have been grabbing figures from the Reaper collection and adding colour to them.

These four will end up being used to represent some heroic types in an ongoing Runequest campaign (ongoing since about 1985).

First up we have a hero of the Lunar empire:

Our hero started with a black primer coat and was painted using Humbrol enamels (flesh, red, white), Model Master enamels (leather, spear shafts) and Humbrol acrylics (metal areas). the Humbrol acrylic metallics are really nice paints.

Our next mighty warrior is a Storm Bull, hence the helmet and the runic decorations on his shield:

Again, a mixture of enamels and acrylics. This lad is supposed to be from dry and dusty plains, so I wanted to give him a darker skin tone.

He has a friend, who evidently uses his shield as a weapon some of the time:

And lastly, a more refined and northern type, with richly decorated armour and a certain dragonish theme. For those who are familiar with Runequest/Glorantha, this will either get him killed on sight or possibly leave him in a calm zone approximately a mile in radius...

I was disappointed with the way the Model Master enamel did not cover well on the first application over Humbrol enamel red, but then I looked at it from a couple of feet away and thought "that's a fairly cool fire effect".

Marksmanship Competition

I've had a handful of the older GW Empire plastic handgunners lurking in the corners of my workspace for some time (two, three years. Maybe a bit longer). There weren't enough to make a unit, so they have become mannequins for Empire finery and frippery. They've also been refresher pieces as I've pulled out long-unused tinlets of Humbrol enamel and bottles of Model Master military paints.

Anyways, on the firing line and squinting against the bright sun to see their marks, we have representatives from Hochland, Nuln, Ostland, Reikland and Altdorf:

Some of these figures started with dark primer, others with white. The paints ended up being a mix of enamels and acrylics from Humbrol, Vallejo, Model Master and GW. I used Humbrol acrylic metallics for the arquebusses; I'm impressed with how well these work and how smooth and shiny they are when dry.

The Evil Empire Calls To Me

Yep, I'm being seduced by GW again. The release of the new High Elves army book is what did it. Pretty new models, shiny toys, the Everqueen rereleased with a new sculpt...

...so I gave in to the craving and pulled out a couple of old figures to mess around with potential colour schemes. I like the High Elves in their white cloth robes and bright armour. I like the fluff for Avelorn and Alarielle. So, here we have white and shiny Elves with green and red tertiary colours to represent troops from Avelorn. I wanted bright greens for fresh growth and a bright red shading to pink for Alarielle's influence.

A pair of spearmen:

and a pair of archers:

I liked the old Empire figures that looked a lot like landsknechts. I like the Kislev range; I have lots of Kislev units and decided to make an allied contingent for the Kislevites with the gaggle of Empire figures I have. Ostermark seemed like a good provincial choice - shared border, shared foes (chaos), interesting colour scheme. So here are a pair of handgunners decked out as Ostermark state troops:

Elves on Horses

After a wait of nearly a decade, I have some Rivendell/Eregion Elf cavalry! Until GW put out this box, the only option was to convert by sawing up metal Elves and plastic cavalry (Riders of Rohan worked well) and then using much superglue and putty.

The good news - no mucking about with saws, knives or glue-your-fingers-together liquids. The bad news - you still need putty. GW have taken a step backwards with plastic figure design here. The individual parts are beautifully sculpted and well molded. The horses go together perfectly. It's the riders that are goofy. Someone decided that the riders should be made of four pieces - right arm, right and left body halves and a frontal piece comprising the chest and face.

Sensible, intelligent people might think that the head should either be a separate piece, as is the case in many GW kits, or a single piece attached to one of the body halves, as GW have done occasionally. No, some complete dork decided that the back of the head would be attached to one of the body halves but the front of the head would be attached to the chest piece. Why is this a problem? Because, unlike all the other pieces that form perfect seamless joins, the chest piece does not fit neatly into place - there is a gap all the way around the head which needs to be filled and smoothed. Doh.

Anyway, after a certain amount of disgusted grumbling, the knight captain and his erstwhile followers were ready for painting. I chose to use the same (as best as I could remember it, anyway)  blue and gold colours as the other hundred-odd Rivendell Elves in my collection (did I mention I like Elves?), rather than the new (and to my mind, less impressive) red-brown and steel colours.

I'm not sure why, but I could not summon a lot of enthusiasm for this batch of figures - burned out on big figures, maybe, or maybe because of the above-mentioned fit issues, but I just did enough to make them respectable on the table top.

One last note: the photos are randomly inserted in this post because Blogspot is playing silly buggers. Somehow it just seems appropriate for these Elves.

Oh, they have been blooded and performed stunningly well in battle. :-D